Eleanor is the founder and managing editor of Designerly Magazine with a passion for sharing business leadership and branding strategies. She’s also a web design consultant with a focus on customer experience and user interface.
Earth Month in 2025 is an opportunity for you to lead with purpose. People pay attention to how brands show up, and they expect more than just a green logo or a recycled social post. Your customers want to see action, not just talk.
You don’t need to be a global giant to make an impact. Whether you run a growing business, design for ethical brands or manage marketing campaigns, this month is your chance to do something real — and make it stick long after April ends.
Do you dream of connecting your small business with global audiences? Make it a reality with a scaling plan and determination. Consistent and practical branding should be the foundation. Then, consumers everywhere can identify you among thousands of competitors. Follow these recommendations to overcome the challenges designers, marketers and owners face during expansion.
Small-business owners and freelancers are often one-person operations or have limited staff. They may rely on a single big client for most of their revenue. Unfortunately, even long-term relationships can change on a dime, and you might lose your biggest customer.
In forums across the internet, entrepreneurs lament a sudden loss of their income. Their longtime client hires a new manager and they cut ties, someone goes out of business, a customer dies or they outsource to another country or even move operations in-house.
Things may seem bleak, but there are ways to recover and thrive after losing your biggest customer.
Graphic design, while practiced by many, is often misunderstood especially in the business and marketing worlds. That’s because a lot of people believe it simply refers to visual marketing, particularly through images. But that’s only a small part of the, quite broad, concept.
It’s unfortunate too because graphic design is an instrumental component of creating captivating digital marketing campaigns. What’s more, it’s integral to creating all kinds of materials including social media content, blogs, and news articles, websites, and even company branding.
The next question is what kind of benefits practicing graphic design can bring marketing teams? What rewards can you reap by doing so?
We are currently in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), which includes the data and technology used to link people and machines globally. 4IR includes everything from artificial intelligence (AI) to 5G to smart infrastructure.
In a study by the Center for Sustainable Development, Southern Santa Caterina, Brazil, scientists took an in-depth look at how COVID-19 ushered in the 4IR faster than expected. With more people forced to work from home, businesses had to embrace technologies they'd not yet considered. Advances in healthcare saw some of the biggest changes, including telemedicine.
